8.9 Earthquake Hits off Coast of Japan

Japan was hit by a huge magnitude 8.9 earthquake off its northeastern coast Friday. There was a magnitude 7.4 aftershock about 30-minutes later. There are reports coming in of 33-feet (10-meter) waves washing away cars and pushing ships onto land.

Update 3/11/2011: Earthquake was 9.1

Officials have revised the earthquake to 9.1, said Gerard Fryer, geophysicist of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. This means the earthquake is twice as large as the original 8.9 measurement due to the logarithmic scale. This makes it the 4th largest earthquake ever recorded.

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4 Comments

I’m glad you mentioned water, too! That is so often overlooked. If you do face an earthquake or major power outage, immediately fill your bathtubs, sinks and use whatever spare containers you have to get water! The water utility has about 24-hours of backup power if for some reason they cannot restore electricity, you may be without water for awhile. Best bet is to store at least 7-days worth of water per person (that’s a lot of water, you need to buy large drums and add water tablets).

Yes, agreed completely, and I plan to add some posts on storing water, purifying it, ways to collect it in various urban & suburban disaster scenarios. Meanwhile, I can’t believe how large an earthquake hit Japan.

An 8.1-foot wave destroyed piers and docks in Crescent City, CA. There were tsunami alarms in Hawaii but no reported damage. In Santa Cruz, CA the surfer said the water receded 8ft (where there used to be 8-foot deep water was now sand) and you could walk out farther on the beach, but no damage reported, just lots of waves!